TASS, June 22. Specialists of the Tomsk University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics, the company Micran (Tomsk) and the Research Institute of Precision Instruments (Moscow) successfully tested a new airborne compact radar station designed to get high-resolution images, the University’s press office reported on Monday.
The project is being implemented with the support of Russia’s Science and Higher Education Ministry.
The new small-size station mounted on a light plane, a drone or a helicopter is designated for a radar survey of the terrain in any weather conditions. The radar’s developers managed in the process of its creation to achieve some parameters that ensure images’ high resolution.
"The station is unique precisely in these parameters: the high emissive power, the bandwidth and micro-navigation that takes into account the jitter of a drone or an aircraft. These are the parameters that are crucial for the accuracy of images," Senior Researcher at the University’s Research Institute of Electro-Communication Systems Mikhail Rovkin was quoted by the press office as saying.
The flight tests of the radar’s mock-up have confirmed that a flight every few hours allows conducting a high-precision radar survey of ten districts on an area of 30 km to 30 km, the press office said.
The radar’s developers say precision imaging is very important as it helps to monitor the terrain at a qualitatively new level, using, for example, drones in any weather conditions, countering biogenic and man-made threats. Precision imaging can be used to determine the boundaries of flooding, the condition of soil (its salt content, etc.), the quality of crops and forests and oil spills.
Contracts have been signed for carrying through the results achieved by the radar’s developers. As the next stage, the specialists are planning to create the radar prototype.